British aid focused on reforming Kenya's security services fails to slow deaths at the hands of police force considered among the world's most corrupt

Kenyansare five times more likely to be shot dead by police than by armed robbers, according to a new report that highlights failures in British attempts to help reform the country's police force.

Police shot close to 70 per cent of the 1,868 people who died from gun wounds in Kenya in the last five years. The next deadliest perpetrators, armed robbers, were responsible for only 14 per cent of the deaths.

Providing training and advice to reform the country's security sector and its police is part of the £125 million that the Department for International Development gives Kenya in aid each year.

Significant extra funding is sent through the Foreign Office and other government departments, although officials could not give precise figures.

But the new report, from Kenya's respected Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU), suggests that the money has had little impact and that rank-and-file police officers still shoot with impunity.

Of the 1,868 Kenyans who died from gunshot wounds between 2009 and 2013, 1,252 – or 67 per cent – were killed by a police officer. That proportion changed little during the five years the researchers studied.

For 63 per cent of those deaths, police failed to report details of the circumstances of the shooting. No reason was given as to why the officer opened fire in 68 per cent of cases.

Police officers often ran "gun for hire" schemes where they rented out their firearms to criminals, the report found. Many officers colluded with known criminal gangs.

"Kenyans' hopes for a new police service have been bogged down by the dearth of political will to refocus policing away from safeguarding the ruling class and towards public safety and security," said Peter Kiama, IMLU's executive director.

David Kimaiyo, Kenya's inspector general of police, has resisted repeated calls for his resignation over a series of recent debacles, including failures during the al-Shabaab terror siege of Nairobi's Westgate shopping centre.

Further attacks have followed and violent crime has soared by 22 per cent in the last 12 months. Ninety-two per cent of respondents to a Transparency International study voted Kenya's police the country's most corrupt institution.

Significant chunks of Britain's aid for police reform was directed to establishing the Independent Police Oversight Authority, which despite a staff of 80 has so far failed to complete any investigations more than two years after it was formed.

Senior British police officers have been seconded to work with their Kenyan counterparts, giving professional and technical advice. British money has funded Kenya's Anti-Terror Police Unit, and bought vehicles and radios for border patrols.

"Our independent advice and training has supported reform, community policing and allows the public to raise concerns to police oversight bodies," a DFID spokesman said. "No UK funding has gone towards firearms training."

Zipporah Mboroki, spokesman for the Kenya Police Service, disputed the data in IMLU's report, published in Nairobi on June 26.

"If there is any misuse of any fire arm, that officer will go to court," she said. "Those people [IMLU] have only found the research they want to find. They have their statistics and we have our own."

However she could not supply any official figures and instead asked The Telegraph to post a letter to the inspector general of police requesting further information.